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Lazy Mans guide for better lunches...help.

My current self-lunch making skills are sandwiches. I'm bloody tired of them. So to you H/A I turn for advice. What are some healthy (but reasonable) easy to make lunches I can create the night before work? I'm seeking something that can be whipped up in 15 minutes or less and holds up in a cooler for a few hours during the day.

I'm trying to amend my diet, but if I don't eat enough I get low blood sugar related shakes. ie. Family history of hypogycemia. I'm pretty good at coasting, but I'm looking for something that I can eat maybe twice in a day? Early/late mini-lunches. Are there preprepared options? I have SuperTarget/Walmart/Publix in reach. I'm looking for meals, snacks, and liquid refreshment options.

This is both for my health and my pocketbook. Thank you for any advice.

Anything with pasta, for the most part! Spaghetti (or any noodle) + sauce (red or white) + hamburger in the sauce if you like. The nice thing about this is that you can prepare in bulk and make enough for 3-5 meals throughout the week.

Tuna salad. Can also bulk prepare!

Grill up some hamburger + taco seasoning, cut up some tomato/onion the night before, grab some shredded cheese and lettuce and taco shells, and voila! You could have burritos if you add beans, taco salad, tacos, whatever. Easy quick prep.

Cans of soup! Zero prep the night before. A LOT of soup is high in sodium, but Campbell's has recently put out some low sodium varieties - think they are in chicken broth and chicken noodle. I just had one today, it is not bad at all.

Obviously, frozen lunches. You can do it full-dinner style, or get pot pies, mini pizzas, frozen burritos/chimichangas... whatever your heart desires. You can get super healthy or super unhealthy. Ranges from $2-3 a pop in my experience.

If you are truly looking to cook your own, rather than buy cans of soup or frozen lunches, try googling "15 minute dinners" or "30 minute dinners" and follow some of the excellent recipes. Add in the word "easy" to your google search if your cooking fu is not high.

From personal experience, I choose one main dish - be it cans of soup, frozen lunches (the healthy variety) - and "accessorize" by adding fruit/veggies (apples, oranges, grapes, cherries, carrots, strawberries - takes half a sec to throw stuff into a ziploc) and a snack-size bag of chips. The end result is a VERY healthy meal. Also it's a meal that I can snack out throughout the day if I feel like it.

Tortillas are generally more versatile than sandwich bread, You can make wraps out of tons of stuff. If you make a rice dish, you can wrap it up and make a little burrito for you for lunch. You can also throw all sorts of shit in wraps and have it hold up better. Choose one or two nights to spend longer cooking and then utilize the leftovers in various ways. Tuna salad, black beans and rice, chicken salad, Cooked chicken breasts, stuff like that will take slightly longer to make, but you'll have good shit for later.

Caesar:
Cook a few chicken breast on a flat iron with black pepper and salt.
Wrap up: chopped chicken breast, a bit of bacon bits, lettuce, Parmesan cheese, creamy Caesar salad dressing, I'll occasionally throw a few crutons in if Im going to eat it right away (if not they'll get soggy)

The biggest time-saver I find is making big batches of brown rice/bulghur wheat/quinoa over the weekend and then freezing them (while they're still warm!) into portions. Defrost one the night before, or use it as an edible icepack in your lunch and almost all of the texture is preserved for lunch.

If you have a microwave, you might want to look into some frozen meals. They're usually very cheap -- Lean Cuisines are around $2.50 -- and there's a wide enough variety of meals that you won't get too bored.

do you cook dinner at home? i find the best way to consistently have something for lunch is to make more than you will eat for dinner and pack the rest in a tupperware container... nuke at work and enjoy

also, fruit, such as bananas, apples, pears, grapes, etc. are great snacks at work and add great variety throughout the day... i would suggest nuts but apparently they're not great for you ... oh, and my recommendation is to avoid more difficult to eat fruit due to the mess... oranges that must be peeled, kiwis, etc. are not good... and cherries and pomegranate stain like FOREVER

same mini tuna can but i bring a whole wheat wrap in and make a tuna wrap on the spot. bring extra fixings to taste (small bit of shredded cheese, bit of lettuce.. whatever...)

some frozen meals these days are actually pretty descent and some have healthy choices. They honestly are not that bad and i suggest taking a look down the frozen aisle at the grocery store. Everything from pastas to mini pizza type things are available.

for accessories i mix it up but sometimes i buy puddings, fruit cups, and the like. my latest fav is Dole pear chunks in a light syrup.

I also will most times buy like one box of Triscuits or "cracker" of some kind, then when i get home ill divide said box up into a few different amounts in zip lock bags, ready to grab the morning i head out.

Another tip is buy a box of cereal bars / fruit bars. they come in 6-8 per box, perfect for a "weeks worth" of breakfast items... ill eat those at like 9amish.

Idk, im constantly looking for new things to take as well, I also will make big batches of spaghetti / random pasta with a simple meat / red sauce, can get 3 days of lunches and suppers outa that baby!

Good luck, while the grocery bill goes up, i found i saved hella money not going out to eat all the time, and the extra awareness of what you are eating just by proxy of doing this will help with health related choices as well (it did me anyway).

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
Rich Cook.

people who bring/make lunch: any concept of how much you spend a day on lunch? Whenever I think about whether I should bother making lunch, the savings just don't seem drastic enough for it to be worth the effort. I probably spend about $6.50 eating lunch out each day. Bringing a frozen meal would probably be about $3-4. Something like a sandwich and a snack would probably be like $2.50. So I guess if I could save $4 a day on lunch, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, that's like a thousand dollars a year. Not a tiny number, but not enough to get my ass to the grocery store a couple days a week, in the kitchen every morning, etc.

I tried an experiment last week. I spent 10 dollars on lunch meat + bread for sandwhiches. I had enough food for about 8 sandwhiches so it almost lasted me 2 weeks. I routinely spent 6-10 dollars when I eat out for lunch.

The food I fix is usually MUCH healthier on top of cheaper. If I make the food I spend about 8-15 dollars a week, whereas when I eat out it's 30-50 dollars a week. Saving a minimum of 20 dollars a week doesn't seem like much but that 1k can go a long ways.

That sounds good, and it's probably something like two portions, right?

3 or 4, depending on how much you eat at a sitting.

(I'm eating some right now)

I'm trying to lighten up my diet a bit but still remain healthy. I'm fairly thin (5'10 / 165) but I've developed the beginnings of a spare tire I'd like to get rid of. Honestly, I could eat all that in one sitting easy, but I'm trying to tone it down a little.

"At first he thought it might be a natural occurrence - maybe a rabbit. But upon closer inspection, it was clear a knife had been used. And rabbits don't carry knives."

I've been making some salads to take to work for the past few weeks. Just some lettuce, those little matchstick carrot things, chopped up red onions, yellow/orange/red peppers, blueberries, cherry tomatoes. Mix in a small glob of ranch dressing, sprinkle some parmesean cheese over the top, drop a couple of bread and butter pickle slices on the top. Take some croutons on the side to put on later at work. Takes me about 10 minutes to make at home the night before.

Soak the beans overnight then boil them for an hour (as directed on the back of the package). Cook the rice and barley together (I used a rice cooker - one cooking cycle is enough). Mix the beans and rice together with a splash of chicken broth and creole seasoning to taste. Mix in currants.

Divide into containers and store in the freezer. Can be warmed up or eaten cold.

A bag of pearled barley is $.50 for a 1 lb bag. The rice and means are similarly priced. Barley and pinto beans measure to about 2 cups per pound, red beans are around 2.5 cups per pound. Currants are ... $3-5 per box, and you'll probably use about half a box.

So... the price for the dry ingredients for the above recipe works out to approximately $3. The amounts of broth and spice are negligible, in relation to the amounts in which you have to purchase them, but we'll be generous and say that they add $.50 to the cost of the recipe.

A reasonable serving size for this dish is around 1 cup. The recipe makes around 7-10 servings. 7 servings at $3.50 is $.50 per serving.

This isn't really a full meal though, so I usually have it with yogurt ($.50 per serving) and chicken breast cooked in olive oil and spices, or italian dressing (also very cheap to prepare - maybe $1 per serving).

So, I'm spending about $2 per meal.

The best part is, all I have to do is cook once on each weekend, put the food in portion-sized containers, and just pull them out of the fridge or freezer right before I leave for work.

I recommend you cook some stuff that lasts for several batches. Here's an example. Today, I cooked two things simultaneously, pumpkin bread and cream of broccoli soup. In about 1.5 hours, I cooked it all and cleaned up the kitchen. I have like 6-8 bowls of soup now, and two giant loaves of delicious moist pumpkin bread.

If you're too lazy for that much of a time commitment, I recommend slow-cooker stuff. I make amazing pulled pork sandwiches and it only takes like 10 minutes of prep time total. Then you have 8 pulled pork sandwiches that reheat well. Chili might take 20 min prep time but again, makes tons of chili.

1. Half a stick cream cheese, Half round of smoked mozz grated, 1/2 cup crumbled feta, 3 chopped green onions, splash of milk into food processor. pulse till well mixed then salt and pepper to taste. this is a spread/dip you can use for a multitude of things. You'll have enough for a week.
2. Get thin sliced peppered turkey from your local deli
3. Cut a tomato into thin slices
4. Get a pack of burrito size tortillas
5. Package of sprouts

Spread Green Onion Feta spread on one side of tortilla. Put the tomato slices, then the sprouts, then peppered turkey. Roll the tortilla and use a little spread to hold it together, then cut into fourths.

Sure, it's a type sandwich but it's tastier than a sandwich and more nutritious and it takes less time to make than rice.

1 Sprinkle some of the lemon juice over the chopped onions while you prepare the other ingredients. This will take some of the oniony edge off the onions.

2 Drain the oil from the tuna and put the tuna into a large bowl. Add the beans to the tuna and gently stir to combine. Add the onions, herbs, black pepper, lemon zest and lemon juice and mix to combine. Add Tabasco or chile to taste. If the salad needs more acid, add a little more lemon juice. If the salad seems a little dry, add a little bit of olive oil. Add salt to taste.

3 Chill before serving. This salad will last several days in the fridge, tightly covered.

I tried an experiment last week. I spent 10 dollars on lunch meat + bread for sandwhiches. I had enough food for about 8 sandwhiches so it almost lasted me 2 weeks. I routinely spent 6-10 dollars when I eat out for lunch.

The food I fix is usually MUCH healthier on top of cheaper. If I make the food I spend about 8-15 dollars a week, whereas when I eat out it's 30-50 dollars a week. Saving a minimum of 20 dollars a week doesn't seem like much but that 1k can go a long ways.

This is one of the most amazing revelations you can have in your mid 20s along with brewing a pot of coffee at home and buying a thermos can save you so much money over the course of a month.

Most the time, we only eat out after cooking for 5-6 days straight, or if it's something we're genuinely ill equipped or unable to do well. Leftovers are a primary staple of our lunch diet.

Uh, Mrt, could you maybe try to be a little more confrontational? I don't think we're getting enough negative vibes from you in here.

@ OP: I'm seconding Raneados' stew advice, but i'd advocate using small new potatoes, with skins, which helps keep them as discrete entities, rather than breaking down into mush during cooking, and tradeoff of chunk size versus cooking time will ensure that you have a stew containing carrots, onions etc. as opposed to a paste. After a couple of tries, you will be able to get the right combination, so that all the components are well-flavoured, AND still maintain their shape/ integrity.

Many Korean dishes are cheap and easy to make, and also healthy and nutritious. For example, Yukgaejang with lean meat, or Bi Bim Bap with meat substitute (soy). They may take 30 minutes to prepare, but if you have the time it's worth it.

I'd also suggest purchasing a blender so you can make smoothies for breakfast. A little bit of fat free yogurt, fat free milk or juice (I prefer mango or peach), and a few frozen fruits like strawberries or blueberries is not only chock full of vitamins and antioxidants, but also fat free and tasty. Surprisingly filling too.